


Check the Mirrors and Reverse

by Mercy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Pre-Canon, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-01
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 10:58:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercy/pseuds/Mercy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh, NC, 1995. Sam makes a friend and learns a couple of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Check the Mirrors and Reverse

When Sam is twelve, there's a long job in Raleigh and they stay for two months in a run-down rented house in a bad part of town, because houses in the bad part of town come already equipped with iron bars on the windows. Sam likes having a house, even if the neighborhood is bad, and it doesn't seem that bad, but Dean still won't let him take the school bus home. Dad comes back every few days, but usually just long enough to have Dean patch up anything that needs patching and to sleep for a few hours, so it's mostly just him and Dean. Dean perfects grilled cheese sandwiches and makes friends with the prostitute who sometimes stands in front of the closed jewelry store next door at night. She goes by Tiffany but Dean says her real name is Beth. Sometimes when Sam's supposed to be in bed he watches through the window bars as Dean carries out coffee in two of the chipped mugs that came with the house and they lean against the store's security grate and don't seem to talk. Sometimes a car stops and Dean takes Beth's cup and fades into the shadows, where the driver can't see him but Sam can, and he's always fingering the knife in the back of his waistband. 

Dean drives Sam to and from school in the Impala every day and looks happy behind the wheel. Dean learned to drive as soon as he could reach the pedals but now he has a real license with his real name on it. Sam is shrimpy and doesn't know how to drive yet and Dad says he's still too young, but he thinks he could if he had to. He's still the freaky new kid, but Dean pulled up one day when some 8th-graders were giving him crap, and someone heard Sam's silent prayer that he wouldn't have to fight and that Dean wouldn't just drag him out of there like he had once or twice-- Dean got out of the car, but he just leaned against it with 'Highway to Hell' blaring while he glared at the other kids. They haven't bothered him since then, and maybe he's the freaky new kid with the scary brother in the cool car, and maybe word gets around about that, but he catches little enough crap that he can relax enough to make a friend, another kid in his class who's also named Sam. 

They can't be differentiated by last initials because his classmate is named Sam Wilson, so depending on who's talking they're Sam and White Sam, or Sam and New Sam, or Sam and Winchester. Or a few less nice things that don't get said to their faces. But they're friends. Sam Wilson loves Spiderman comics and plays trumpet in the school band, and they would ride the same school bus if Sam were allowed to ride the school bus, so sometimes Dean drives Sam Wilson home too, with both of them in the back seat and Dean complaining about not being a damn chauffeur over the loud music. Sometimes Mrs. Wilson invites Sam for dinner, and Dean lets him stay. Once she figures out that Dean's sitting across the street in the car the whole time Sam's in the house, she starts inviting him too, just quietly and with no questions, and Dean loves her pecan pie and can't shut up about it. 

Sam's invited on a Thursday to spend the night on a Saturday and Dean says no way. Dad comes back on the Friday and he says no too. He says a lot more than no, about staying safe and about how there's a reason they have to lock themselves up in a house with iron bars and salt lines under duct tape that are checked every night. About never knowing who you can trust and not putting other people in danger and how they have a job to do, all of them. He says these things in between gulps of whiskey while Dean stitches up a gash on his arm and Dean looks Sam like he's a pain in the ass and tells him to shut up and drop it.

But Saturday morning, Sam's still begging, because he's already said yes. Dean slams sausage and eggs down on the table in front of Sam so hard that the plate breaks and says fine. He sweeps the mess, food and all, into the trash and serves Sam the other half of what's on the burn-scarred avocado green stove. Dean's breakfast is a cup of coffee, which he drinks while sitting across from Sam laying out the rules and the cautions, about making sure all the doors and windows are locked even if he has to sneak around to do it, and to run like hell if anything seems even the smallest bit off, sounding just like Dad. Sam thinks he's probably the only kid in the universe to go to a sleepover packing holy water and salt and a knife, but he gets to go so the rest of it doesn't matter. Sam says he's full when there's still half his eggs and most of a sausage patty left, and makes up for it later with the pizza Mrs. Wilson orders for them. 

He and Sam Wilson stay up late watching movies and doing Mad Libs and seeing who can fit the most sourballs in their mouth, and Sam doesn't check any of the locks, which he will never tell Dean about, except for the window of the downstairs bathroom since he can do that without being seen. 

Sam Wilson's room has glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and they lie on the floor in sleeping bags and trade made-up constellations until the words taper off. Sam stays awake just long enough to pray for Dean and Dad and the Wilsons and ask to keep them all safe. Dean's already sitting in the kitchen when Mrs. Wilson gets them up for waffles, and Dean doesn't say a word when she asks if they'd like to come to church, just looks at Sam for a second and lets him agree, even though Dean squirms his way through the service and doesn't join in the singing. 

Sam says, "Thank you for having me," to Mrs. Wilson and means every last letter of it, and she says anytime and hugs him. 

Dean doesn't say anything at all when Sam slides into the front seat of the Impala; not a word while they're going the opposite direction of their temporary house and its barred windows, not a word when he stops the car in a mostly empty parking lot somewhere near Duke's stadium. Then he sticks his head back in the open door and looks at Sam like he's being a pain in the ass and says, "You wanna learn to drive or not?" 

Driving's not as easy as Sam thought it would be, especially with Dean cussing and gripping white-knuckled onto the dashboard even though Sam's going maybe five miles an hour and there's nothing to hit within a hundred yards. Still, he buys Sam ice cream at the end and doesn't even make him get a kiddie cone, and when Dean says he did good Sam doesn't remind him that he should say well. 

Dad's there when they get back to the house, and he's packing up. He asks where they've been and Dean just says, "Church." 

Dad snorts. "Try something I'll believe next time."

"We were!" Sam exclaims, because that part's true and it's not fair for Dean to get in trouble. "There was a real choir and everything."

Dad gives him a weird look, like he might be an alien. "Job's done. We're hitting the road at sundown, so pack up."

Dean drives and Dad sleeps in the back. Sam writes a letter and mails it when they stay at Pastor Jim's for a little while, but Sam Wilson never writes back. "It's just the life," Dean tells him when he asks if maybe his letter never got there. 

They come back through Raleigh a decade and a lot of _the life_ later, and if Dean looks a little too long at women on street corners or Sam purposely gets them lost looking for the right cemetery in a way that takes them past a little blue house that's now got a for sale sign and tall grass creeping up on the seats of the swings in the front yard, neither of them mentions it.


End file.
